GLENDORA, Calif. – After 46 years of dedicated service to NHRA and the sport of drag racing, NHRA board chairman Dallas Gardner recently announced his retirement and will hand over the reins to current NHRA CEO Peter Clifford, effective immediately.

Gardner will continue to work with the NHRA as a consultant.

Gardner joined NHRA as treasurer in 1973 and was promoted to vice president and general manager in 1978. On Jan. 1, 1984, he was promoted to NHRA president, becoming just the second president in NHRA history.

Gardner spent 15 years as president, pushing forward a wide range of initiatives including the modernization of racing facilities, improved television programming, and cornerstone programs such as NHRA’s Youth and Education Services and the Jr. Drag Racing League, before becoming chairman of the board in January of 2000.

LAS VEGAS – Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s 2020 spring weekend received an overhaul on Wednesday, with the announcement that the ARCA Menards Series West Star Nursery 150 will move from The Dirt Track at Las Vegas to The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The track’s racing lineup will begin on Thursday, Feb. 20, with the Star Nursery 150 at the three-eighths-mile Bullring. The addition of the ARCA event gives LVMS four consecutive days of racing and brings the newly merged series – previously known as the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West – to the property’s short track for the first time since 2012.

“This is a great way to kick off our February 2020 race weekend, and we couldn’t be happier to come together with NASCAR and the ARCA Menards Series West to put this race together,” LVMS President Chris Powell said. “Star Nursery has been a valued partner of ours for many years, and we can’t wait to showcase The Bullring to a national audience with the Star Nursery 150. We’ve had a great 2019 season, and next year’s racing lineup is shaping up to be another record-setter for us.”

The Star Nursery-sponsored K&N Pro Series West race was a popular addition to LVMS’s September race weekend in 2018, when Sheldon Creed emerged victorious at The Dirt Track, and again there in February when Hailie Deegan made her way to victory lane.

The 150-lap Bullring race will be accompanied by a super late model open competition event, as well as features in other divisions.

The Bullring – constructed in 1985 and reconfigured in 2000 – previously hosted K&N Pro Series West races from 2001-03 and in 2011 and 2012.

MILLINGTON, Tenn. — The ARCA Menards Series and the NASCAR K&N Pro Series will come together on Sept. 26, 2020 at Memphis Int’l Raceway to crown a series champion.

The inaugural season of the ARCA Racing Series Showdown, where drivers from the ARCA Menards Series and NASCAR K&N Pro Series will race against each other in a new and unique race format, will conclude a 10-race championship series at MIR in 2020.

The Memphis 200 will crown the ARCA Racing Series Showdown champion in NASCAR and ARCA’s only visit to the Mid-South.

“We and our race fans in the Mid-South are appreciative for the opportunity to host the Inaugural ARCA Racing Series Showdown championship weekend at Memphis International Raceway,” Memphis Int’l Raceway General Manager Justin Kamm said. “It will be an exciting conclusion to the 10-race showdown as we all see who will be crowned as champion Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020.”

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – NASCAR and ARCA have announced a new championship format for 2020 that will see the continuation of three historic regional championship series and the coronation of a new fourth champion, all under the ARCA Menards Series banner.

The series provide an integral development step for young drivers who aspire to move up to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series or NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series; as well as a professional level for short-track veterans.

They will also provide continuity to three of the longest running high-level regional stock car series in the United States.

The four championships will be:

• ARCA Menards Series East and ARCA Menards Series West will continue the traditions established by the Busch North Series (founded in 1987) and Pacific Coast Late Model Series/Winston West (1954) and currently competing as the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and West. The series will feature an annual schedule of six to eight races and crowning of separate regional champions.
• ARCA Menards Series – The 20-race ARCA Menards Series, founded in 1953, a mix of national-series combination events at venues such as Daytona Int’l Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, as well as short tracks like Madison Int’l Speedway in Wisconsin and the Illinois and DuQuoin State Fairgrounds one-mile dirt tracks.
• ARCA Racing Series Showdown – Ten races within the larger ARCA Menards Series championship will feature the best of the three series coming together to crown a Showdown champion.

“We cannot be more excited about 2020,” said Brandon Thompson, Managing Director, NASCAR Touring Series. “Both NASCAR and ARCA have worked extremely hard over the last year to provide a rules package and schedule that will serve as the foundation for the preeminent series for racing at this level. It was important for us to move the series forward while creating an environment inclusive for both the current long-term owners and drivers in the series as well as aspiring competitors.”

“What first started as a friendship between Bill France Sr. and John Marcum nearly 70 years ago took a momentous step forward today,” added ARCA President Ron Drager. “The amount of history and tradition these series are bringing together to form four elite championships for drivers is an amazing testament to the strength of this sport.

“We are proud and honored to be able to bring the ARCA sanction to the East and West Series; and we are looking forward to working with the race teams, tracks, media partners, fans, and sponsors that have helped those series achieve their long term success.”

NASCAR also announced if an East, West or current ARCA Menards Series car owner has a car that meets the 2019 rulebook, there will be a rules package that will allow them to compete in 2020.

“We’re pleased that we’re able to extend our racing sponsorships to include the ARCA Menards Series East and ARCA Menards Series West,” said Menards President & CEO John Menard.  “We hope that race fans throughout the country will further enjoy great racing action while also becoming familiar with the Menards brand by shopping at our home improvement stores located in the Midwest or at Menards.com”.

The 2020 ARCA Menards Series will officially begin on Saturday, Feb. 8 at Daytona with the Lucas Oil 200 driven by General Tire. It will mark the 57th annual ARCA visit to Daytona.

The Showdown will take the green flag with ARCA’s inaugural visit to ISM Raceway on March 6 as part of the national series’ event weekend in Phoenix, while the West will kick off the Las Vegas weekend with a return to the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

West dates also include traditional events at Irwindale Speedway, Sonoma Raceway and All American Speedway in Roseville, Calif., and will crown its champion at ISM Raceway in November.

The East will race at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., as well as Toledo (Ohio) Speedway, Watkins Glen Int’l, and again be part of New Hampshire Motor Speedway’s annual Full Throttle Fall Weekend.

The East season will culminate with the championship race at Dover Int’l Speedway.

In addition to Daytona and Charlotte, the ARCA Menards Series schedule will include Talladega Superspeedway, Michigan Int’l Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway and Pocono Raceway, and finish the season at Kansas Speedway on Oct. 16.

The Showdown 10-race schedule features Salem Speedway, Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, Minnesota’s Elko Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Iowa Speedway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, and will crown its first Showdown champion at Memphis Motorsports Park on Sept. 26.

Complete schedules for all four championships will be announced shortly.

Since April 1989, radial tires have been the standard for NASCAR’s top-three racing divisions. Prior to that change in design took place, bias-ply tires were used from the days drivers first entered NASCAR events, offering good side-by-side racing and challenges that had to be overcome.

The terms radial and bias-ply describe the internal construction of a tire. Radial tires came to NASCAR because of improved durability, but also because they were becoming more prominent in the marketplace.

In elementary terms, bias-ply tires were built by placing fabric cords laid at opposing angles to the ply underneath it, creating a crisscross pattern. Most bias-ply tires were four ply, indicating they had four layers of reinforcing fabric cords. For track use, crew chiefs could use “stagger” — the difference in circumference between the left-side tires and the right-side tires — by under inflating the left-side tires and the right-side rubber. Heat also expended them, improving the car’s ability to turn left through fluctuating air pressure.

In 1948, the year NASCAR was founded, Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. provided tires for open-wheel racing and began branching out to NASCAR’s newly formed arena. Two years later, Johnny Mantz won the inaugural Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway on hard-treaded truck tires similar to those used in Indy car racing.

In 1954, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. entered NASCAR with a plan to build tires for stock car racing. At the time, the majority of the circuit was made up of dirt and asphalt short tracks. Goodyear engineers. set out to create a tire that could withstand the high speeds generated at two relatively new superspeedways — Darlington Raceway, which was built in 1950, and the one-mile Raleigh (N.C.) Speedway that opened in 1952.

By the early 1960s, race tires were becoming wider and were designed to have more tread on the racing surface. The deaths of Jimmy Pardue in 1964 and Billy Wade in ’65 prompted the design of the inner liner, a tire within a tire that guarded against catastrophic blowouts such as the ones that took their lives. Throughout the mid to late 1960s, drivers Buddy Baker and Darel Dieringer bravely ran over objects on the track at high speeds to further enhance tire safety.

A tire controversy before the debut race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in September 1969 caused drivers to stage a walkout over safety. Firestone, the manufacturer of the tire, couldn’t made the tire hold up at high speeds. The company left NASCAR altogether in 1974. Its departure left Goodyear as the sole tire provider for the next 12 seasons.

Then, in 1986, a hostile takeover attempt and uncertainty of tire delivery prompted the sanctioning body to open the door to Hoosier Tire Co. While Goodyear employed 350,000 workers around the globe, Hoosier Tire Co., owned by Bob Newton, had only 16 employees in his Indiana stable.

H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, former president of Charlotte Motor Speedway and a former representative for Firestone, knew the storm was brewing.

“It was reminiscent of the old Goodyear and Firestone days in Cup racing in the 1960s,” Wheeler said. “Then along comes Hoosier. I knew when they came in that tire was going to get real light. Hoosier ran a real soft tire and the softer you get, the faster you go. Goodyear didn’t want to take it that soft. The bias-ply tire was a much more comfortable tire to ride on for race drivers. Obviously, tire companies didn’t want them because they weren’t selling them as much. Both manufacturers got to the point where they were so on the edge their tires became prohibitively dangerous. And the tire companies never want danger.”

Entering Speedweeks at Daytona Int’l Speedway in 1988, Baker, Donnie Allison, Neil Bonnett, Lake Speed, Morgan Shepherd and Rick Wilson were among those using Hoosier tires.